Twenty-five years of photography by Jacopo Benassi at the Pecci Center

From September 8 to November 1, 2020, the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato presents Vuoto, the first solo exhibition in a museum by photographer Jacopo Benassi, curated by Elena Magini.

Starting from the artist’s studio, partly recreated inside the rooms of the Pecci Center, the exhibition project develops by collecting some of the series and some of the most significant works of the photographer, who has been active for twenty-five years. A site-specific billboard project also announces the exhibition in city spaces: dedicated to Prato’s textile district, the large-scale billboard campaign entitled The Belt, which will kick off Aug. 31.

The title of the exhibition set up at the Pecci Center, Void, recalls the author’s feeling about his production, a desire to bare himself in a path of public self-exposure. In the exhibition, the photographer thus gives himself entirely to the public, showing his studio, his tools, the creative landscape that accompanies him in his work, the set of shots that give life to a 20-year investigation into the themes of identity, night, and work.

His first photograph is of a punk group in a community center.Since the late 1980s, Benassi has been formed in La Spezia’s underground culture, developing a style consisting of a lack of depth of field and flash.

The subjects portrayed are very disparate: from the sphere of international underground and music culture (starting with the experience of the Btomic club run by the photographer himself with some friends) to portraits of models, actresses, artists, fashion designers, to the investigation of the body, which varies from autobiographical documentation of sexual encounters to a look at ancient statuary. Self-portraiture is often linked to his performance career: experimentation on performance, his own or others’, is always linked to music and mediated by the photographic image.

Also present in the exhibition are unpublished works related to his interest in publishing and book production. It is precisely from an editorial work in the process of publication that The Belt series was born, in collaboration with theManteco Archive. With The Belt, from Aug. 31, the activities, tools, men and women that animate Prato’s textile district become the subjects of images displayed on large billboards in various parts of the city.

Pictured: Jacopo Benassi, Blondie (Debbie Harry) (2009-10)

Twenty-five years of photography by Jacopo Benassi at the Pecci Center

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